Linear relationship between nanostructural features and coloring of biomimetic photonic material

Biomimetic photonic materials manipulate light in a way so that different colors of light reflect depending on the viewing angle, resulting in an iridescent effect. These materials are aesthetically pleasing and used in design; they have the potential to serve as a great resource for art if it is possible to manipulate and design them. Due to the seemingly unpredictable relationship between biomimetic photonic materials’ nanostructural features and coloration, current research has not arrived upon a consistent method to engineer these materials to consistently achieve desired coloration. We hypothesized that in biomimetic photonic materials, there exists linear relationships between nanostructural features of iridescence and their coloring features. We collected data from previous studies in which researchers synthesized polystyrene core shell particles coated with melanin-like polydopamine shell layers (PSt@PDA materials), a type of biomimetic photonic material. Based on this data, we built a series of linear regression models in R that describe the relationships between PSt@PDA core shell particle diameter and the coloring features, including hue, saturation, and brightness, at all viewing angles and two lightings, and then developed a user-friendly interface to visualize the predicted color based on user-defined inputs. With these results, engineers should be able to precisely target nanostructural features that need to be changed in order to achieve a specific coloration.